The Administration & Regulatory Affairs Department (ARA) recommends that City Council adopt an ordinance suspending, for 45 days, implementation of the CenterPoint Energy Resources Corp., d/b/a CenterPoint Energy Entex and CenterPoint Energy Texas Gas (CenterPoint or Company) Gas Reliability Infrastructure Program (GRIP) interim rate adjustment. CenterPoint provides natural gas distribution services in the Houston metropolitan area, serving approximately 430,000 residential, 27,000 small general service, and 1,000 large volume customers in Houston. The City of Houston exercises original jurisdiction over the rates, operations, and services of CenterPoint under the provisions of the Texas Utilities Code for customers inside city limits.
On March 2, 2023, CenterPoint filed an annual GRIP interim rate adjustment for customers within the Houston Division. The GRIP permits CenterPoint to implement an interim rate adjustment to recover return on the change in invested capital and changes in depreciation and property taxes related to the new investment. Pursuant to State Law, the City’s role in the GRIP proceeding is to review the application to ensure compliance with GRIP statutory requirements. This includes a ministerial review of the filing to test whether GRIP calculations are correct.
CenterPoint is requesting a revenue requirement increase of $35.5 million for service to retail gas customers within the Houston Division. The filing captures changes in invested capital from January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2022 — an approximate $229 million increase in net investment. If the requested adjustment is adopted, the fixed customer charge for all customer classes would increase as follows:
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CenterPoint Monthly Fixed Customer Charge Current vs. Proposed
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Customer Class
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Current Rate
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Proposed Rate
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Proposed Increase
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Residential
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$ 19.74
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$ 22.21
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$ 2.47
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General Service Small
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$ 24.50
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$ 28.23
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$ 3.73
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General Service Large
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$ 290.11
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$ 360.84
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$ 70.73
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Pursuant to the Texas Utilities Code, CenterPoint’s request will take effect May 1, 2023 — 60 days after filing — unless City Council adopts an ordinance suspending the proposed effective date for 45 days — to June 15, 2023. The suspension period will provide the City the time necessary to review the request, address potential ministerial corrections to the calculations with CenterPoint, if any, and to prepare a final recommendation for consideration by the Mayor and City Council. The City must complete its review of the current 2023 GRIP request within this statutory timeframe.
ARA recommends that City Council adopt an ordinance suspending for 45 days the implementation of the CenterPoint Energy Entex GRIP interim rate adjustment.
Fiscal Note
There is no impact to the fiscal budget or no additional spending authority. Therefore, no Fiscal Note is required as stated in the Financial Policies.
Departmental Approval Authority:
_______________________________________ __________________________________________
Tina Paez, Director Other Authorization
Administration & Regulatory
Affairs Department